Researchers Seek Crucial Tool: A Fast, Finger-Prick Ebola Test

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Wed, 2014-11-05 07:42 — mike kraft

NEW YORK TIMES Nov. 5, 2014
By ANDREW POLLACK

Searching for a new way to attack Ebola, companies and academic researchers are now racing to develop faster and easier tests for determining whether someone has the disease.

A researcher checks an Ebola diagnostic test in Marcoule, France. Credit Jean-Paul Pelissier/Reuters

Such tests might require only a few drops of blood rather than a test tube of it, and provide the answer on the spot, without having to send the sample to a laboratory.

The tests could be essential in West Africa, where it can take days for a sample to travel to one of the relatively few testing laboratories, leaving those suspected of having the disease in dangerous limbo.

Rapid tests might also be used to screen travelers at airports, providing a more definitive answer than taking their temperatures.

“There’s a great deal of interest in a technology that can screen large numbers of people from a finger prick in only a few minutes,” said Cary Gunn, chief executive of Genalyte, a company in San Diego that says its approach can do just that. “You can imagine testing an entire planeload of passengers and screening through them cost-effectively.”

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